4 ms·

Care to argue why? Also, there are countless alternative languages to compile down to HTML or CSS available. Feel free to create your own if none agree with you

by dvdcxn 10y ago

Care to argue why? Also, there are countless alternative languages to compile down to HTML or CSS available. Feel free to create your own if none agree with your personal leanings.

simion314 10y ago
CSS has many weird is corner cases where you have an issue and after a lot of debugging, trying things, getting mad you find on Stack Overflow that you add a ilogical rule like "min-width:0", so css is ok until you end up in a tricky problem where you need to understand how the css code works under the hood to fix. Other issue with css is too big and complicated, good layout modes are added but we stil ahve the old ones and you need to understand everything because most developers work on existing code and you hit all kind of layouts like floating,absolute,relative. Flexbox layout seems better but stil worse then layouts I have seen in MXML and WPF. So ignoring JS that you could replace, getting a new GUI for the Web inspired by MXML/WPF or QML with a sane subset of css would improve the situation.
- obsurveyor 10y ago
  > you add a ilogical rule like "min-width:0" Yeah, like my favorite of these lately, widows and orphans. Chrome changed a default that affected inline-blocks within columns that caused them to wrap prematurely after version 52 or so. It is especially bad because the other popular browsers don't even support these yet and looked fine.
coldtea 10y ago
>Care to argue why? Where do I start? 1) Designed for document presentation, not for apps. 2) Limited widget selection (native forms and that's it). 3) Different implementations between vendors. 4) Bad at layout (20+ years to get to Flex and Grid CSS layout which kind of resembles UI layouts but is still not supported everywhere. 5) Slow 6) Batter hungry 7) Too many un-needed UI layers (DOM over native widgets) 8) Extra language layer (JS on top of v8 on top of native execution) 9) JS is not the best language to write large scale software (to put it mildly) 10) Restricted access/integration to native platform APIs.
ksk 10y ago
Do you want to listen to the reasons, or just tell them to "go make your own if you don't like it"? You can't have it both ways. I agree that simply saying X sucks is not a valid argument. Howeever with CSS/HTML the flaws are too numerous and already discussed ad nauseam over the past 15 years. Everytime a new version of CSS comes out, people go and try it and find out that it sucks, whether its th broken box model or the broken float layout techniques or the constant fiddling you are forced to do to get anything working. Every web developer I've seen adopts the 'edit and refresh' trial and error model of developing which is the direct result of a bad spec. Which also explains why there isn't even a reference implementation. As far as UI layout is concerned I am fairly sure I could out-compete a web developer in terms of time taken to implement, using something like IMGUI.
- pcwalton 10y ago
  > Which also explains why there isn't even a reference implementation. As someone who has spent years implementing those standards, a reference implementation would not help me at all. > As far as UI layout is concerned I am fairly sure I could out-compete a web developer in terms of time taken to implement, using something like IMGUI. Dear imgui's layout model doesn't scale at all, due to the fact that it's immediate mode. It redoes layout from scratch every frame.
  - ksk 10y ago
    >As someone who has spent years implementing those standards, a reference implementation would not help me at all. I don't quite understand what you meant your comment to be indicative of. That nobody else would consider it useful? That you personally see no value in reference implementations at all? >Dear imgui's layout model doesn't scale at all, due to the fact that it's immediate mode. It redoes layout from scratch every frame. Could you detail the UI are you thinking of where IMGUI is inefficient but HTML/CSS isn't? Not asking for a formal spec, just a general usecase.. My problem with CSS/HTML is that productivity scales inversely when using them.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    >a reference implementation would not help me at all. Well, considering that the web has been for decades a landmine of subtle rendering differences based on different interpretations of the same standards, it would surely help others... Also, I'm not sure what you're saying here. That, warts and all, you love the web as a programming platform? Well, maybe you do. But then again, you don't program everyday IN it. You program a rendering engine for it in Rust, so you're safely protected from the horrors of web programming. >Dear imgui's layout model doesn't scale at all, due to the fact that it's immediate mode. It redoes layout from scratch every frame. Aren't (or at least weren't) most computer games "immediate mode" too, and far more demanding than any web page?

by dvdcxn 10y ago

Care to argue why? Also, there are countless alternative languages to compile down to HTML or CSS available. Feel free to create your own if none agree with your personal leanings.

simion314 10y ago

CSS has many weird is corner cases where you have an issue and after a lot of debugging, trying things, getting mad you find on Stack Overflow that you add a ilogical rule like "min-width:0", so css is ok until you end up in a tricky problem where you need to understand how the css code works under the hood to fix. Other issue with css is too big and complicated, good layout modes are added but we stil ahve the old ones and you need to understand everything because most developers work on existing code and you hit all kind of layouts like floating,absolute,relative. Flexbox layout seems better but stil worse then layouts I have seen in MXML and WPF. So ignoring JS that you could replace, getting a new GUI for the Web inspired by MXML/WPF or QML with a sane subset of css would improve the situation.

obsurveyor 10y ago
> you add a ilogical rule like "min-width:0" Yeah, like my favorite of these lately, widows and orphans. Chrome changed a default that affected inline-blocks within columns that caused them to wrap prematurely after version 52 or so. It is especially bad because the other popular browsers don't even support these yet and looked fine.

coldtea 10y ago

>Care to argue why? Where do I start? 1) Designed for document presentation, not for apps. 2) Limited widget selection (native forms and that's it). 3) Different implementations between vendors. 4) Bad at layout (20+ years to get to Flex and Grid CSS layout which kind of resembles UI layouts but is still not supported everywhere. 5) Slow 6) Batter hungry 7) Too many un-needed UI layers (DOM over native widgets) 8) Extra language layer (JS on top of v8 on top of native execution) 9) JS is not the best language to write large scale software (to put it mildly) 10) Restricted access/integration to native platform APIs.

ksk 10y ago

Do you want to listen to the reasons, or just tell them to "go make your own if you don't like it"? You can't have it both ways. I agree that simply saying X sucks is not a valid argument. Howeever with CSS/HTML the flaws are too numerous and already discussed ad nauseam over the past 15 years. Everytime a new version of CSS comes out, people go and try it and find out that it sucks, whether its th broken box model or the broken float layout techniques or the constant fiddling you are forced to do to get anything working. Every web developer I've seen adopts the 'edit and refresh' trial and error model of developing which is the direct result of a bad spec. Which also explains why there isn't even a reference implementation. As far as UI layout is concerned I am fairly sure I could out-compete a web developer in terms of time taken to implement, using something like IMGUI.

pcwalton 10y ago
> Which also explains why there isn't even a reference implementation. As someone who has spent years implementing those standards, a reference implementation would not help me at all. > As far as UI layout is concerned I am fairly sure I could out-compete a web developer in terms of time taken to implement, using something like IMGUI. Dear imgui's layout model doesn't scale at all, due to the fact that it's immediate mode. It redoes layout from scratch every frame.
- ksk 10y ago
  >As someone who has spent years implementing those standards, a reference implementation would not help me at all. I don't quite understand what you meant your comment to be indicative of. That nobody else would consider it useful? That you personally see no value in reference implementations at all? >Dear imgui's layout model doesn't scale at all, due to the fact that it's immediate mode. It redoes layout from scratch every frame. Could you detail the UI are you thinking of where IMGUI is inefficient but HTML/CSS isn't? Not asking for a formal spec, just a general usecase.. My problem with CSS/HTML is that productivity scales inversely when using them.
- coldtea 10y ago
  >a reference implementation would not help me at all. Well, considering that the web has been for decades a landmine of subtle rendering differences based on different interpretations of the same standards, it would surely help others... Also, I'm not sure what you're saying here. That, warts and all, you love the web as a programming platform? Well, maybe you do. But then again, you don't program everyday IN it. You program a rendering engine for it in Rust, so you're safely protected from the horrors of web programming. >Dear imgui's layout model doesn't scale at all, due to the fact that it's immediate mode. It redoes layout from scratch every frame. Aren't (or at least weren't) most computer games "immediate mode" too, and far more demanding than any web page?